Communication and Pain, pt 2.

A sub-theme of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the question of whether or not human beings can understand one another. The main character loses his wife, and begins to realize that there were depths to her that he was unable to comprehend. In a flashback sequence, after the main character hears that his wife has gotten an abortion while he is away, he witnesses a scene in which it is questioned whether the idea of physical pain can be transferred from the sufferer to the viewer. What is empathy (?), asks the sufferer/performer who puts his hand through an open flame in front of a confounded audience. The scene is focused on sight and viewing, not on talking or explaining. Is pain, and thereby empathy, better translated through imagery and action (rather than speaking)?

These questions bring us back to Veena Das (Life and Words:2007), who questions whether empathy can be translated through the words I am in pain. Rather, what Das finds is that traumatic experiences are left unspoken, memories are “forgotten” and left behind. Das finds that trauma and pain haunts through lapses and dis-junctures. What Das and Murakami both seem to indicate is that trauma and pain are things rarely spoken of, rather they’re already “known” or they’re transferred through imagery (and silence). Trauma and pain are those things which are unspeakable.

While one aspect of Murakami’s questioning of empathy is in regards to pain, he also focuses on pleasure. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, has almost as much pleasurable sex as it does torture in it. The strange thing is, much of the sex in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle could be considered psychic sex. Yes, psychic sex. A supporting character in the novel is a psychic prostitute – she has sex with people through their minds, typically in a dream space. These “psychic sex” scenes are described as being even more lucid than physical sex, and certainly more pleasurable. Because they are enacted purely through the mind, and in a dream space, the psychic sex scenes also give Murakami the ability to push the boundaries of what a person might normally experience during the sex act. While Murakami questions whether or not we can adequately empathize with pain, he doesn’t question whether pleasure can be adequately transferred between two people.

But I want to go back to the problem of pain and empathy, and communication. Because I still question what we can really get across to another. I also question why the discussion of empathy is always focused on pain – why isn’t it focused on pleasure? What is it about the pain of another that we have become so focused on?